For the Birds Trapped in Airports

'For the Birds Trapped in Airports' exists as a self-assessed progress report regarding me being a man. This body of work is my first departure from a traditional narrative approach with photography and exists as a varied array of works that stem from an optimistic desire to never stop trying to be better than I am. On and off for the past several years, I've been developing this collection of poetic representations regarding my experiences in learning what it means to be a man. The work embraces the tensions, doubts, and hopes that occur in trying and failing to be my ideal self, while learning the importance of the gaps between the man that I am and the man that I want to be. Some of the work demonstrates this in a series of "firsts": my first nude portrait, my first try at writing a poem, making plans to re-kiss my first kiss, etc. Other included works are products inspired by working through various struggles with confidence and following intuition, representations of notable traits and examples of masculinity, as well as photographs of birds.